The Provenance || Jon Snow | Game of Thrones

2.06

"A cripple?  You let a cripple escape?" Theon barks with an utter sense of disbelief and overwhelming pride, "The boy can't walk, but somehow he slipped past you?"

The guard looks fairly apologetic at this slip, though continues to shrug as he responds, "The giant must have took him."

"The giant?  Hodor?"  Theon scoffs in awe, "Oh, that's all right, then.  You let a halfwit escape with a cripple.  And Rickon, too?  The little one?"

The guard grunts, his eyes residing on the 'prince' who has equal fault in this folly, "Gone, along with the wildling woman.  The one you were fucking."

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    Jon cannot help looking at the woman with a seemingly common sense of disbelief upon the continent of Westeros, this wildling girl playing with his mind in more ways than one.  And not just his mind.  The bastard had wanted to disappear into eternity this morning when he woke up to a reaction to this woman's body pressed firmly to his, not helped by her apparent beauty and seductions.  And at this point, those were the only attributes working for her, this Ygritte prodding at his nerves and irritation alike with her sharp and demeaning tongue that Jon's tempted to dislike.

    But now, here she is, tied up like a common felon from the Seven Kingdoms and taunting Jon about her freedom.  He laughs at the concept so easily juxtaposed to the ropes wrapped around her wrists, scoffing, "You're a free woman?"

    Her eyes narrow at him minutely, although she soon recovers as her chin tilts up with what Jon reads as pride, "I might be your prisoner, but I'm a free woman."

"If you're my prisoner, you're not a free woman.  That's what 'prisoner' means," Jon shakes his head, but even he cannot help the humour playing across his face.  Honestly, this wildling is starting to greatly resemble Gabrielle Baelish in his mind and heart, though Ygritte is obviously more brazen and stubborn than the southern female.  But they're close enough, and Jon knows Ygritte is not a free woman given this similarity.  If Gabrielle Baelish, in all her intelligence and power, is not free, than this wildling has no chance of experiencing what she boasts.

Ygritte eyes Jon's thoughtful and humoured expression with nothing less than hostility, biting back, "And you think you're free?  You swore some stupid oath and now you can never touch a girl."

"It was my choice to say the words."

Her eyes and lips quirk at that, although she's trying to understand his choices, so foreign to her 'free' ears, "So you don't like girls?"

"Of course I like girls," Jon almost spats, as if this woman didn't feel her effect on him last night and this morning.

But still, she does not seem to grasp this concept of sacrifice--something that will bring her sorrow in the months to come, "But you chose never to touch them."

Jon sighs, and in the simplest of terms, he tries to explain this concept to her, "That's the price you pay if you want to be a man of the Night's Watch."

"So instead of getting naked with a girl, you'd prefer to invade our lands—"

"Invade your lands?" Jon cries with a overwhelming shock at this woman's propensity and tongue, "Wildlings raid our lands all the time.  Some of them tried to kill my little brother, a crippled boy! "

But Ygritte is not a woman of southern origin or raising, meeting his eyes and force with the jut of her chin and the response, "They're not your lands!  We've been here the whole time.  You lot came along and just put up a big wall and said it was yours."